


knife loves heart, human loves human

by purplefennels7



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Ace Q, Alternate Ending - SPECTRE (2015), Asexual Character, Fandom Trumps Hate 2020, First Kiss, M/M, Q's cats - Freeform, SPECTRE (2015) Fix-It, admin squad friendship, can i really hit yall with spectre fix it in the year of our lord 2021? yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29126556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/purplefennels7
Summary: “You got on a plane for me,” Bond says then, tilting his head, and Q finds he can’t quite breathe right. He’d hoped for a goodbye, dreamed maybe of an explanation, but he’s out of his depth here and drowning was never the sort of death he’d wanted.or: q is used to bond leaving. he's not used to him not coming back.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 9
Kudos: 105
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	knife loves heart, human loves human

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingintodivinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingintodivinity/gifts).



> for fallingintodivinity, for FTH 2020. i had a lot of fun writing this, i hope you enjoy !! wishing you a lovely, if slightly belated, 2021 <3
> 
> link to [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/51M8seALd4xrap7IN7RghD?si=qYkYQHt8Rxex5UjXrM8FSA) here

Q is used to James Bond walking out of his life. So much that he’s started to expect it, really, and maybe he shouldn’t be conflating MI6 with his life but he’s Bond's quartermaster, he thinks he gets to take that liberty. He doesn’t notice the way he’s also used to him coming back. Not until the last time.

“He isn't leaving,” he insists even as Tanner piles them all into the armoured car and they leave Westminster Bridge, and James Bond and Madeleine Swann, in the dust. “You know how it goes, he disappears for a couple weeks and then breaks into one of our flats without any of his equipment.” Tanner’s hands tighten around the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror he sees Mallory's brow pinch, and next to him Eve stiffens a little.

He doesn’t know what they’re all on about. Bond always comes back.

“We'll see,” Mallory says eventually. “We’ll certainly have our hands full.” There’s the clinking sound of stainless steel, and then he passes a flask over the seat for Eve to take. She throws back a shot and presses it into Q’s hand, and only then does he realize his skin is barely warmer than the metal. The alcohol burns as he takes a swallow, and he shivers almost violently and tugs his duffle coat closer around his shoulders, hunching over his mobile and focusing harder on the sweeping program he’s running.

Sooner than he expects, they’re pulling into the Vauxhall parking garage and Tanner is pulling the keys from the ignition and exchanging them for Mallory's flask, taking a long sip and looking pale and drawn and shaky and exactly how Q feels.

“Technically, it’s pub night tonight,” Eve says as she shuts the car door behind her, and she’s met with three incredulous faces when she straightens back up. “What? It’s true. M, don’t you have scotch?” Mallory blinks at her, but nods.

“I guess tonight deserves that. Well, come on then.”

They troop up to M’s office together, and Q doesn't forget about the empty space where Bond is supposed to slide in a couple hours late but it doesn’t hurt thinking about it, not yet. There’ll be plenty of time for that yet, but tonight they’ve all nearly died several times over and he’ll take this little bit of warmth where he can get it. Intelligence is a lonely business, and that suits him just fine, but somehow he’s amassed at least three people he’d trust with his life and he’s never told any of them that but he thinks they know anyway.

* * *

Life goes on, without Bond. Just like it always does. And Q just pretends he’s away and off comms on mission, like he always does. Contrary to popular belief, MI6 doesn’t revolve around Bond, and neither does Q. Maybe if he says it enough times he’ll believe it.

Tanner keeps on showing up in Q branch, several times a day even, and keeps shooting him concerned looks when he thinks he isn’t looking. He always has a valid reason, but really, they’re trying to restructure an entire intelligence operation for the second time in as many years. It’s sort of sweet, but Tanner is the chief of staff and Q is fine. Sure, he isn’t really sleeping, but he never does when there’s agents in the field. He ignores the part where there’s always agents in the field, and the fact that Bond’s status square is still up on the branch plot boards, reading _assumed inactive_ but still blinking every once in a while.

Mallory comes in once, just after Tanner has left for the third time that day, and Q braces for, well, something. He doesn’t think Tanner isn’t reporting the minutiae of the number of cold cups of tea on his desk straight to M, but then again he wouldn’t be surprised either. But he just heads for the corner where the Q branch cats are sleeping, picking one of them up and Q gets to watch the tension drain immediately out of his shoulders, so quickly that he’s almost afraid he’ll fall over.

When Mallory straightens back up he has the tabby, Cinnamon, in his arms, and she just blinks and rearranges herself instead of yowling and trying to struggle free like she does with everyone except Q and Eve. He comes back over to ask Q a question about C’s access to MI6 systems, heedless of the cat hair getting all over his suit, and Q quirks a grin and reaches out to pet Cinnamon’s head as he answers. Evidently, M is Cinnamon-approved, and both cat and head of MI6 look decently happy about it, so Q decides not to mention it.

He corners Eve the next time she comes in with Thai and a stack of evaluation reports.

“Why do M and Tanner keep checking on me?” he asks, taking the food from her arms and directing the reports to one of the few empty spaces left on his desk. “I’m fine.”

“Q, you haven’t gone home in days,” she answers, dropping into his desk chair and propping her heels up on the desk.

“Yes I have. I went yesterday because the cats missed me.” She rolls her eyes and steals a bite off his fork.

“And then you came directly back here, I saw you on the cams. That doesn’t count. When was the last time you slept in a bed?”

Well, Q hasn’t really been sleeping at all, but that’s not for Eve to know.

“When was the last time _you_ did? Eve, I’m fine. And M and Tanner certainly have better things to do than hang around Q branch all day.”

“M came for the cats and you know that. And I think Tanner is trying to be your friend.” He already is, Q thinks, and alarms himself with the sentimentality of it.

“if it’s in the same way we’re friends, I’ll pass,” he jokes instead, and she slaps him in the shoulder, and he tries to push her feet off the desk before remembering the knives he’d personally built into the heels of her shoes, and decides not to risk it.

* * *

It's a week later and Q is in the basement workshop, the sun just starting to rise outside, when the door to the lab slides open with a rattle of the old chains. Q thinks first that he’d definitely ordered someone to get those oiled weeks ago, and second that no one is supposed to be here at this hour, and then he looks up and promptly stops thinking anything at all.

“Bond?” falls from his mouth, hands freezing over his keyboard. And it is him, silhouetted by the lights from the garage and looking entirely put together for a man just about a week removed from nearly dying in a collapsing building. Bond doesn’t answer, just walks closer and Q watches his features resolve out of the shadows until he stops a few feet away from Q's makeshift desk.

“Hello, Q,” he says, and Q inclines his head, feeling not very much different from a mouse in the sights of a big cat.

 _What do you want from me now?_ he thinks bitterly. Because Bond always wants something, and Q will always give it to him, and he doesn’t really regret it but sometimes he wonders what would happen if he said no. But it’s a stupid question. Evidence quite clearly proves that he never will.

He just wishes Bond would ask for the thing that Q most wants to give.

“You got on a plane for me,” Bond says then, tilting his head, and Q finds he can’t quite breathe right. He’d hoped for a goodbye, dreamed maybe of an explanation, but he’s out of his depth here and drowning was never the sort of death he’d wanted.

“So I did,” he replies neutrally, and years spent around double-ohs means that he’s trained himself out of most of his tics but there must be something on his face because Bond takes another step forward, closes the distance between him and Q’s desk a little more. His step is confident as ever but there’s something tentative there, like he never is when he’s invading Q’s space, and Q just watches and focuses on keeping his breaths even.

But Bond doesn’t come any closer, just stands at a respectable foot away and doesn’t try to touch any of the things that Q hasn’t stopped leaving out on the tables and just looks at him, almost like he’s trying to pick him apart with his eyes.

“Am I meant to take this as some sort of declaration?” Q asks eventually, with the very best of his professional veneers drawn up over his voice like a shroud. Intentions are just one of the things that have never, ever been clear around Bond but Q has known for far too long - since the plane maybe, but really since he’d coded the Walther to Bond’s palm first and hadn’t even shot him when he’d come back without it - that he’ll never learn his lesson. He’ll end up following that path into the fog over and over and over and this whole thing is just one more proof of it. Bond doesn’t even need to be there for it to happen.

“Not unless you want it to be.” Bond's next words are like a hook, lodging solidly under Q’s ribs and twisting and twisting and twisting at the bit of hope he’s never had the heart to squash. He’s given up on not falling but he thought he’d hit the ground a long time ago.

He finds himself looking up, and then he’s locking eyes with Bond and there he is again, drowning, and the water always remembers the shape of his heart. No matter how many times he tells himself he’s going to stop letting Bond do this, it isn’t going to work. It’s always going to end with him drinking his way through Eve’s wallet and telling her he doesn’t give a shit what Bond does with himself as she pats his hair and tries to be consoling.

“Do you want it to be?” Bond says again. _Yes._

“Are you coming back?” Q asks instead, and braces for the answer. He can't stop thinking about watching Bond walk away, shivering in the cold on Westminster and wondering if he'd ever see him again. The splash of yet another palm-coded Walther hitting the surface of the Thames echoes dully through his head.

"I'm already back, aren't I?" And the waters are warm this time, and maybe he’ll take the plunge gladly.

“Are you staying, then?” And that’s when Bond takes the final steps to put him on Q’s side of the desk, and Q looks up at him and feels hope, of all things, igniting in his chest where ice had just lived and being around Bond has always been like that and Q shouldn’t love it like he does.

“If you’ll have me.”

Q swallows, and jumps.

And Bond’s mouth is as warm as he’d imagined it might be, and the kiss is gentler than he’d ever expected, and safety is nothing anyone should ever feel around a double-oh but this is the closest he might get and he’s never really wanted safety anyway. Not when he’s been chasing Bond for years now.

Eventually they end up at Q’s flat, and it turns out that Bond’s been hiding a goddamned bullet hole through the shoulder the entire time, and Q curses him out while Bond bleeds onto his bathroom carpet, again, and he isn’t sure if he’s stupid for not getting rid of the thing or annoyingly prescient because it wouldn’t feel this familiar if he had. This is old news, stitching Bond up even though he’s never had past rudimentary field first aid training and thinking about how he’s running low on bandages and how many rounds of bleach it’ll take to get the blood out of the carpet this time.

He’s sure that half of MI6 thinks they’re fucking despite the black ring on his right hand but the important people know the truth and honestly, he couldn’t care less about the rest. Not that Bond hadn’t offered, more than once, and it took three tries before Q had told him he was ace, and then he’d stopped asking. Q had been fully prepared to tell him to fuck off if he’d kept trying to proposition him after that, and he doesn’t know why but it’d still surprised him when he hadn’t.

Bond kisses him as he’s tying off the last stitch, and Q's cat Tesla bolts into the room at the same time and winds around Bond's legs, and Q halfheartedly scolds Bond not to get blood on his cat as he leans down to pet her.

* * *

He tries to act appropriately surprised the next morning when M calls him into his office to tell him about Bond's ‘unexpected return,’ but after this long Mallory knows him better than that and it’s clear from the glint in his eyes.

“Enjoy the champagne,” he says as Q makes for the door, and he tries not to scrunch his face up in confusion and clearly fails, if Mallory's amused expression is anything to go by.

“Sir?”

“You’re not the only one who has access to the security cams.” He thinks there’s a smirk twitching at the edge of Mallory's mouth as he makes his escape, and promptly bumps into Eve in the panelled antechamber.

“Bond’s back,” she says. “Who wins the betting pool?” Q snorts out an unexpected laugh.

“Anna, I think. You’re not going to ask me if I knew?”

“Q, please. We all know he went to you first.” Q shouldn’t even be surprised anymore.

“Do you and M just sit around and gossip about me all day?” he can’t resist asking, remembering the incomprehensible champagne comment. Eve beams beatifically at him.

“Now, where would be the fun if I told? Anyway, you’re not that interesting. It’s a big organization out there, you know.'' Q fakes offense, hand over his heart, and leaves with Eve's laughter tinkling behind him and a smile on his face.

He finds out what Mallory had meant when he gets back to Q branch and is greeted by his whole staff snickering. R shakes her head when he demands to know what is going on, and motions towards his closed office door, which had definitely been open when he’d left.

And there’s Bond with a smirk and a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice, and a kiss as soon as the door swings shut behind him. It’s the same brand that Q had left at Bond's doorstep at the conclusion of the first mission he’d run comms for, and that’s the exact sort of weirdly sentimental that Bond is.

“Anna sends her regards,” he says as he lets Q go, and Q bursts out laughing.

“How did you even know about that? You’ve been gone.” Bond grins sharply, popping the cork with a knife and pulling out glasses that Q had completely forgotten he’d stashed in his desk drawers.

“I have my ways.” And by that, obviously, he means that he’s somehow quasi-friends with Q’s entire staff because a few years back he’d gotten it into his head to do something for Q’s birthday. How he’d figured out when it was, Q still doesn’t know - but he’d needed favours from the branch to get it done, and apparently he’d just kept on being friends with them after that.

Maybe that was when Q had tipped over the knife’s edge between infatuation and something he doesn’t like to name - because really, what kind of fool falls in love with a double-oh?

The kind of fool he is, he supposes later that night, as he watches Tesla curl up on Bond's head as he settles down on the couch and Bond just reaches up and scritches over her ears, leaning carefully back as to not jostle either his wound or the cat.

“Of course the cats would like you,” he says only half-grumpily as he pours a cup of tea and curls up on the opposite side of the couch with his laptop in his lap. Bond grins, clear and open, and Tesla purrs as if in agreement. Traitor.

“I am, of course, extremely likeable,” Bond replies, and Q puts his feet into his lap just to be petty.

“I couldn’t imagine by whom.”

“You, clearly, and I think Moneypenny will come around soon.”

“Preposterous.” But he’s smiling when he looks back down at his screen, and when Bond slides down the couch to kiss him it feels like a beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are wonderful and make my heart happy.


End file.
